ABC's Election Analyst blogs on the wonderful world of Australian Elections.

March 17, 2014

A Summary of Preferences and Candidates for the WA Senate Re-election

If you re-run last September's Western Australian Senate election with the same votes but using the new Senate preference tickets, then the result of the WA Senate re-election on April 5 would be 3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Palmer United.

This is the same as the result of the first count last September, the subsequent re-count and disaster of missing ballot papers changing the result to 3 Liberal and one each for Labor, the Greens and Sport Party.

Full details of the preference tickets as well as a Senate Calculator using them will be published on the ABC elections site later this week.

For the re-election, several micro-parties have directed preferences in a way that now helps Labor to reach its second quota and makes it harder for the Green's Scott Ludlam to win without a significant rise in his vote.

The Sports Party does not receive as many helpful preferences as last September. There is a subtle shift in the structure of the micro-party alliance, with a more obvious split between left-leaning and right-leaning micro-parties.

It is likely there will be a lift in Labor's first preference vote on April 5. Labor polled 26.59% last September and needs only 28.57% to be certain of two Senate seats. Labor has a much better ballot draw in column F rather than column Z, and seven months have passed since the defeat of the Rudd government. Even if Labor falls short of 28.57%, there are helpful micro-party preferences flows aimed at getting second placed candidate Louise Pratt elected.

Once again the Liberals and Nationals are doing a direct preference swap. Last September the Nationals polled 5.07% and the Liberals 39.20%, 44.27% in total, easily above the 42.86 that would ensure three seats for the Coalition.

The Nationals have a much better ballot draw in column B compared to column U last September, while the Liberals have only moved from column AA to R. It may be the Nationals poll slightly stronger and the Liberals weaker.

Unless the Liberals and Nationals fall dramatically short of three quotas, there are enough micro-party preferences floating around to ensure they win three seats between them. The biggest danger for the Liberals is probably losing a seat to the Nationals rather than to any other party.

If the first five seats point strongly to 2 Labor and 3 Coalition, preference flows favour the Palmer United Party to win the final seat ahead of the Greens, unless there is a rise in Green support.

Enough of the micro-parties have inserted Palmer United in the middle of their ticket to ensure it will be difficult for a micro-party to harvest enough preferences to defeat Palmer, as long as Palmer United can repeat its vote of around 5% last September.

If Palmer stays ahead of any right-wing micro-party, Palmer United can win election on micro-party, Liberal and National preferences.

The Green's Scott Ludlam will find himself a bit orphaned on preferences. The Greens polled 9.5% last September, but have lost a couple of micro-party preferences to Labor. Ludlam's best chance of victory is for Labor to poll more than two quotas in its own right, in which case preferences that might have helped Labor win a second seat instead flow to the Greens.

The problem for Ludlam is that a rise in Labor's support could be at the expense of the Greens. Labor plus the Greens polled 36.08% last September, and this combined vote probably needs to reach 40% before Ludlam can be assured of victory. Ludlam will be helped by any donkey vote boost achieved by Wikileaks drawing column A.

Where last September Labor and the Greens were competing for the same seat, if Labor gets to two quotas then the Greens are likely to be competing with Palmer United Party for the final seat.

Of the micro parties, a couple such as Sustainable Population and HEMP do very well on preferences from left and right, but get shut out behind Palmer in any Liberal and National surplus. Wikileaks will stay in the count for a surprisingly long time with a significant first preference vote, but will miss out to Palmer United on preferences from the Liberals, Nationals and the Christian Parties.

Unless there is a significant rise in the combined vote of Labor and the Greens, the preferences deals mean the two parties can win only two seats, and for the reasons I pointed out above, Labor is better placed to win a second seat, putting Ludlam in the race for the final seat against Palmer United.

Of course, the larger ballot paper may play a part in the outcome. The number of columns has increased from 28 columns to 34, and the number of candidates from 62 to 77. The ballot paper will be the same length, but the font size has had to be reduced.

Of the 77 candidates , only 36 contested last September's WA Senate contest. Eight contested WA lower house seats last September, while another eight get a second go at Senate glory after being defeated in inter-state Senate races last September.

The following parties are running exactly the same candidates on their tickets, the Australian Democrats, Liberal Democrats, Australian Voice, Family First, Australian Sports Party, Shooters and Fishers, Smokers' Rights, Rise Up Australia and Animal Justice.

Labor is running the same two lead candidates, Joe Bullock and Louise Pratt, with new third and fourth candidates. The Liberal Party has shortened its ticket from six to four candidates but is running the same candidates as the first four nominated last September.

Four parties have changed their candidates but kept the same lead candidate. These are the Greens (Scott Ludlam), the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party (Richie Howlett) , the Secular Party (Simon Cuthbert), and the Outdoor Recreation Party (Stop the Greens) (David Fishlock).

Palmer United has mixed and matched its ticket, still led by Zhenya Wang, former lower house candidate for Durack Des Headland at number two, with number two last September in Chamonix Terblanche now at number three.

Wikileaks and the Nationals have changed both candidates on their tickets. The Nationals have replaced David Wirrpanda and David Eagles with two defeated Nationals candidates from last year's state election, Shane Van Styne and Colin De Grussa.

New parties contesting the re-election that did not run in WA last September are the Pirate Party, Voluntary Euthanasia Party, Building Australia Party, Republican Party of Australia, Mutual Party, Democratic Labour Party and the Socialist Alliance.

Three parties that contested last year but not the re-election are the Socialist Equality Party, Australian Independents and One Nation.

Four parties run under different names. No Climate Tax Climate Sceptics have changed their name to the Freedom and Prosperity Party. The Stable Population Party has become the #Sustainable Population Party, with the '#' being part of the registered name. The Bank Reform Party is now the Mutual Party, while Stop the Greens have chosen to use their full name, Outdoor Recreation Party (Stop the Greens). Presumably this longer name will take up more space at the top of the ballot paper.

As well as Headland, seven other candidates were defeated contesting WA lower house seats last September. This includes four Greens, Ian James (Durack last September), Jordan Stele-John (Fremantle), Sarah Nielsen-Harvey (Pearce) and Judith Cullity (Curtin). Ungrouped candidates Teresa Van Lieshout (Fremantle) and Kim Mubarek (Stirling) ran as Independents in the lower house last September, while new lead Katter's Australian Party candidate Phillip Bouwman contested O'Connor last September.

One unique record lies with ex-Liberal MP and ex-Family First and Independent candidate Anthony Fels. Last September he was the lead WA candidate for Katter's Australian Party. Now he leads the Mutual Party ticket, a party that has changed its name from the Bank Reform Party and did not contest the WA Senate last year.

The eight candidates who unsuccessfully ran for the same party but in different states last September are –

Comments

Is it any wonder that only four groups nominated more than twoi candiodates. At a $2000 per candidate deposit ith increased difficulty in getting deposit back tha majority of potential candidates are actively discouraged by nomination fee.

COMMENTS: If a candidate cannot afford the deposit, then they won't be able to afford to campaign, which makes it very difficult to be elected. That is unless you treat the deposit as being like buying a lottery ticket, which is what the current preference ticketing system is.

I would have thought a rise in the combined ALP and Green vote of 4% after Labor moving from unpopular incumbent, some national poll decline for the Libs and Scott Ludlam having a much increased profile. The focus will be very strongly on not giving outright control to one party and this will not help the Lib vote. There is also likely to be a nervousness about microparties after last time. The fact that there is no Hof Reps election should also assist a Senate focussed party like the Greens.

COMMENT: Nervousness about the micro parties may equally increase Liberal and National vote.

I find it absolutely appalling that candidates from other jurisdictions are permitted to nominate. So much for the notion that the Senate is the States' house in the parliament!

COMMENT: There has never at any time in Australian history been a law that prevents candidates from being nominated for contests in electorates where they do not live. Nominators must live in the electorate but residency for candidates has never been required. As far as the Senate is concerned, the Constitution protects free movement between the states which means candidates from other states are allowed to be nominated.

The 2013 vote is a fair starting point, though there are already a number of subtle shifts - looking forward to the calculator so we can test our own interprtations of how these will affect the outcome...:

- Removing ~ 1% from Smokers Rights (an LDP feeder) and handing it to Wikileaks (and on to The Greens)
- Lower primary vote for LDP following awareness of the NSW result and a much less favourable ticket position (though still before the Libs)
- Palmer's spending spree in Tasmania resulting in a reduction of primary votes

And then perhaps in a more general sense:

- Tendency of the disaffected to stay at home without a PM to vote for
- Increased exposure on major party Senate candidates (and Senators for that matter) who often slip through the radar completely unscrutinised at a general election (sometimes for great reasons)

In all honesty I expect that, despite about 6 months of speculation, the end result might turn out to be more conventional than most will expect.

On count 30, with Xenophon on 4.92%, only 4.58% is distributed. It seems the votes he received from Greens overflow in count 29 are not redistributed upon his elimination.

Probably doesn't make a difference to the result in this case, but I bring it up here as presumably you'll be using the same code for the WA calculator.

COMMENT: It's not an error. The Xenophon group's votes are distributed in the order they were received. So it starts with first preferences, the distribution of which fills the final two vacancies at which point the count stops. The Green surplus distributed to Xenophon's group remains undistributed, as would occur in the actual count.

While reading the GVTs, I noticed that a number of the parties have done interesting orderings of the Labor candidates (i.e. not simply giving them consecutive numbers in order). Some of the left leaning parties have preferenced Pratt above Bullock, and some right leaning parties have boosted Bullock above the other Labor candidates.

Do you think this is likely to have much of an effect on the outcome?

COMMENT: Minor parties preferences to Bullock have no meaning as he will be elected on the first count. If in reading a preference ticket you see Bullock's name, you can safely ignore that preference as it will never count. The preferences that matter are Louise Pratt if Labor polls less than two quotas, or for Shane Hill if Labor gets above two quotas.

Antony, I note your comment about HEMP and SPP being shut out on the Liberal surplus.

I've been running some simulations and am getting some cases where Moylan of HEMP gets elected. The general scenario is that he preference-surfs to stay just ahead of elimination and then gets elected on Liberal Democrat preferences, which he gets ahead of PUP.

He also gets ALP preferences ahead of the Greens which is very helpful in keeping him "alive" to that point if the ALP gets a small surplus over two quotas.

It doesn't happen too often. Even in the cases where he does get up, he survives near-death experiences at multiple elimination points. And it may be that his, er, demographic is one that may be under-represented in a by-election turnout. However he does appear to be the most likely candidate to "do a Dropulich" and get elected from a base of c. 1% of the vote.

What is your opinion of Russell Woolf and Verity James' chances? I wonder why there is no party name on the ticket - perhaps they could not use "ABC" in the title.

On another note it is interesting (and welcoming!) to see many micro parties preference Louise Pratt over Joe Bullock. Do you think it will have any effect on the outcome though? Presumably Bullock will get elected on above the line votes anyway, but after the results of the last election, perhaps more voters will choose below the line to make sure their vote counts in the way they want it to.

COMMENT: Only parties can have a group name on the ballot paper and the two candidates are not a party. The The Electoral Act does not permit them to have a group name, it does not matter what they want to call it. Groups with no group name never get elected.

If Labor gets less than two quotas than preferences flow to Pratt. If Labor gets more than two quotas then preferences for Pratt don't count and it is Labor's third candidate Shane Hill who becomes important.

I was just wondering considering that a trigger for a double dissolution is soon to be met with the reintroduction of the repeal of the CEFC in the Senate, what happens to the West Australian by election if indeed a double dissolution is called? How would the AEC go about voiding that election considering the members are yet to be elected? Or would the double dissolution election only elect half a Senate in WA?

COMMENT: It won't happen. The election will take place 5 April. Even if the government re-introduces the bill and gets the second leg of the trigger before 1 July, it won't be used. A Governor-General would be entirely entitled to ask whether a deadlock exists when the new Senate is about to be put in place. And why would a government go to the cost and risk of a double dissolution without first attempting to pass the legislation through the new Senate.

In addition, there will under no circumstances be a double dissolution until a major change is made to the Senate's electoral system. You just couldn't conduct a double dissolution under the current rules given what happened last September.

The writ for an election can be cancelled by the Governor-General on the advice of a Prime-Minister.

Hi Antony
I keep seeing commentary predicting low voter turn out on Saturday. Is voting not compulsory in this type of election? Some clarification would be appreciated.

COMMENT: Voting is compulsory and voters will be fined if they don't vote. Turnout tends to be slightly lower at by-elections, partly because of the lower profile of the campaign, but also because absent voting is not available. We've never had a statewide by-election such as this before. I would think it has higher profile than a normal by-election, and absent voting will be freely available. I'd expect the turnout will be only a few percentage points down compared to last September.